We got up at 9:30 Saturday morning and had to repack suitcases since mine was 52 pounds. We worked that out, crammed all our stuff in the car, and headed to FLL. The car dropoff was quick, and the entire thing cost a total of $103 since I’d redeemed points for most of it. We hopped on the shuttle to terminal two, dealt with crappy service at both check-in and security (where my mother tried to carry through three bags of toiletries), and finally got to our gate.

We picked up coffee and bagels and then ended up at the airport bar for a morning beer. Boarding was quick and we had a 2-seat row to ourselves, so that was good. And as a bonus, we had a layover at CVG, which is in northern Kentucky!

We got there just in time for lunch, so I had a delicious vegetarian ‘cheesesteak’, and Matt got chili, as you do in Cincinnati. Plus Andy Dalton made it, I think.

The rest of our travels were uneventful, and we managed to get the in-laws and all our souvenirs home in one piece!

Sunday morning, we walked downtown for breakfast. This was a challenge, as nothing was really open yet. I had a cappuccino, but I really really wanted more Go Ahead and the grocery store was closed. It was to be expected that things would open late on Sunday in the Bahamas.

well-fed wild dogs in nassau. they mostly hung out at the ‘beachside jerk’.

We walked around Bay Street. About a quarter of the shops were open. I was looking for my usual Christmas ornament souvenir, and we wanted food to bring to the airport in case there was nothing there. We knew we’d probably be sitting around for a while.
We found a pharmacy that sold food and souvenirs. No ornament, but the double-bonus on the Go Ahead. Between the two of us, we bought nine packages to bring home. Score!

We walked back to the hotel, said no to the braiding lady for the last time, packed up, and checked out. A shuttle arrived with a driver we did not know, and that was surprising. I was kind of hoping for Frankie. There was another couple waiting for the shuttle at our hotel, too; the girl looked and acted exactly like Kaia from The Real World, and the guy seemed sullen. There was apparently some ticketing mixup, so she wasn’t going home until the next day. The guy sat down in front of us and was silent.
We made a stop at another hotel on Cable Beach. The people weren’t standing there, so the driver went in looking for them. Our shuttle companion spoke up, without even turning around. He said, “Are you going back somewhere with snow, too?” All of a sudden, we loved him.

We compared vacations, because he had booked a similar package to ours. He was going back to Chicago, and seemed very unhappy about it. He told us he was on a Delta flight to the middle of nowhere; it was the same as ours, to Cincinnati, only his left 15 minutes beforehand.

We had been told multiple times to get to the airport two and a half hours early, and that was for good reason. There was a long line along the front of the building for security, and most of the airlines’ desks were crowded. We were relieved to be able to get seat assignments for our connection back to Minneapolis, considering the trouble we’d had getting there. We got in line for the first security scan before customs, which took close to half an hour.

We cleared customs quickly, I had my suitcase searched, then we stood in another line going upstairs, which turned out to be for yet another security check. I’m not sure why we had to have our stuff xrayed so much, but whatever. We were in the gate area more than an hour before our flight, so we could relax.

The gate area is all in one building, and it was mobbed when we got there. There was a shop, a bar, and a restaurant, so we decided to have a real lunch, if by ‘cheese sandwich’ I mean ‘real lunch’. As we were sitting down, we heard the announcement: our 2:25 flight was delayed until 4:30. Awesome.

Since we only had a 50 minute layover in Cincinnati to begin with, I knew we had a problem. I called Delta, and they said to talk to the people at the gate. Well, everyone was talking to the people at the gate, because it was chaos. All their outbound flights were overbooked. Half of them were delayed. The 2:15 flight to Cincinnati that Chicago boy was on was boarded and then unboarded because they put them on the wrong plane. Our plane was experiencing ‘mechanical difficulties’. We finally got to speak to the guy at the gate, and he told us to come back after the other flight was boarded correctly. We really wanted on that flight, but it was already full. We decided to take the next logical step: have a drink at the gate and enjoy ourselves. That’s exactly what we did.

We went back and talked to a different agent later. He spent about half an hour trying to get us on any flight he could find that would connect back home, but it was impossible. I couldn’t really be crabby with him, because he did his best and I could tell it was pissing him off that he couldn’t work something out. So at 4:30, we got on our return flight to Cincinnati, knowing we’d be spending the night there.

The flight was insane. We quickly discovered that the slimy, nasty dudes from the flight down were on that 48-seat plane with us. They were now accompanied by a couple girls in their early twenties, who they were very happily groping. The smarmiest one of all was seated in the exit row, with the loud, drunk blonde chick next to him. The flight attendant came and told her she had to move out of the exit row, because she didn’t trust her to perform her duties in case of emergency. Personally, I didn’t trust the nasty dude, either. He was clearly disappointed when she moved.

She sat a few rows up, bitching about what had happened. The flight attendant went back up to her and told her she was THIS close to being kicked off the plane. That seemed to shut her up.

In Cincinnati (the airport is actually located in Kentucky, so from then on it became Kentuckinnati), we had the pleasure of being in line behind the Detroit Mafia at the desk where they were handing out hotel vouchers, or trying to make arrangements for people on other flights. The dudes were seriously considering the airline’s offer to fly them to Cleveland and get them a cab to Detroit; they wouldn’t just get them a rental car due to liability. They finally grudgingly agreed to take the vouchers, and of course we were extra thrilled that meant they’d be staying in the hotel with us.

We got our vouchers for the hotel, meals ($7, good anywhere in the airport, whatever), and our boarding passes for the flight the next morning. We hopped on the shuttle with the Detroit Mafia. We cringed as we listened to their conversation. They were truly disgusting.

In the lobby, they all insisted on separate rooms, because Delta was paying for them. They ate a bunch of the hotel cookies and wandered in and out of the lobby, watching some game on TV. They’d occasionally try to talk to us in the lamest way possible: ‘Hello Kitty, huh?’ ‘Yep.’ They asked where they could get dinner, since it was after 9. The girl at the front desk said that the Marriott down the street was the only nearby restaurant, which meant we were going to again end up in the same place. I was dying to ask her to get us a room far away from them, but they were there the whole time. GROSS.

We managed to get to the restaurant long before them, and were almost done with dinner before they showed up. They were seated far away, so at least we were spared that unpleasantess. We ran back to the hotel, called work to tell them we’d be late, and spent probably the only night of our lives in Kentuckinnati.

We got up and shuttled back to the airport, in fear we’d end up with the Detroit Mafia again. Thankfully, they were nowhere to be found. Our shuttle driver was awesome; he told us all about his days traveling around the country playing soccer, and the couple times he’d been to Minneapolis. For once, we met someone who didn’t first associate the Mall of America with our home. He dropped us off and we checked in with no problem. The flight even seemed to be on time!

Since we had some time to kill, we spent our Delta vouchers on breakfast and coffee, and shopped in the airport. I made a beeline for the Kentucky store, because who doesn’t love Kentucky? I got me a tshirt. The girl behind the counter asked where we had come from, then said, “What’s the Bahamas?” Ugh.

When we got to the gate, they were again asking people to take travel vouchers to be bumped, because the flight was overbooked. There was no way in hell we weren’t getting back to Minneapolis on that flight, though. Well, maybe for $500. Apparently you can’t bargain with the gate-people, though.

Dear Delta, you suck possibly even worse than Northwest Airlines, but your in-flight snacks are WAY better. Keep up the good work! Love, Jenni

my straw-market bag!

best bahamas kentucky souvenir ever!

We left Minneapolis at 8am, which would’ve been pretty good timing had the drive to Nashville been 750 miles, a number I had in my head and didn’t bother to recheck. It’s actually 900 miles, but we discovered that a while later, which was for the best.

The drive was uneventful through most of the midwest. In Illinois, I was passing somebody doing 80 or so when I looked in the mirror to see a trooper riding my ass. I quickly moved into the right lane, looking shamed. He turned on his siren and sped by, giving me a dirty look. In all my years of speeding, that’s the closest I’ve come to a ticket on the interstate. Of course there was that time with the Minneapolis cop, but they’re easy. You just ask them out to coffee.

We survived the bleak nothingness of southern Illinois and stopped quickly in Metropolis so Stephanie could see Superman. We arrived just in time for some kind of bizarre religious Superman festival; the main street was blocked off and there were vendors selling state-fair food and cheap designer knockoff schlock. A couple hundred old people were crammed in a tent listening to gospel music. It gave us the willies, so we got the hell out of there and crossed the border into Kentucky.

In Paducah, we cruised the long strip of chain restaurants, looking for a place at which I could dine without serious after-effects. After a few tries, I discovered that TGI Friday’s had a gardenburger, and that was good enough for me. We shoved food in our mouths as fast as we could, trying not to choke while giggling over the employees’ goofy accents.

I took over driving in the dark, which I hate. I have trouble seeing, and after I braked for a port-a-potty on the side of the road, wondering if it was a state trooper, I knew it was going to be bad. Stephanie wouldn’t stop laughing at me. We arrived in Nashville around 11pm, sat in a monster traffic jam, then finally got through to our hotel in Murfreesboro, about 30 miles south of town. It was situated directly between downtown and the festival site. I’m smart like that.

As I stumbled out of the car, the front desk lady came to hold the door open and yelled, ‘REDHEAD!!!!’ I laughed. She told me about the time years ago when she dyed her hair red, and got so many marriage proposals she had to dye it back.

God, don’t I feel that pain.

I picked Heather up from work around 4pm Wednesday afternoon, and we headed out of town. The plan was to drive overnight to Atlanta, in order to maximize our time spent on the coast over the weekend. It was a good plan, if better in theory than execution, but we’ve done this sort of stupid thing before.

The trip was uneventful through Minnesota and Wisconsin. By Madison, I was on my 9th shot of espresso for the day, so things were looking up. Having just seen Radiohead a few weeks ago near Madison, we decided to start a Radiohead retrospective. We argued for a while about whether OK Computer came before or after Kid A. We argued about the meaning of ‘Creep’. (I say it’s about your average self-hating, insecure loner, she says it’s about a creepy stalker. I know I’m right.) We had to listen to ‘Lurgee’ twice while I tried to pin down what exactly I was crying about that time I was driving around my old neighborhood in Chicago late at night, listening to that song. By Rockford, we had made it to The Bends, and had to listen to Thom Yorke singing, “She looks like the real thing; she tastes like the real thing,” two or three times before agreeing that it might be the best song ever, then moving on.

Around 10pm, a little ways south of Rockford, I got out my travel journal and started jotting observations about Illinois. First of all, their towns seem to use some kind of buddy system, as if they were scared to be out there in the middle of nowhere all alone. There’s Champaign-Urbana, Bloomington-Normal, Rock Island-Moline. Also, once you get past Rockford, you enter what is more appropriately the south than the midwest. Long ago, we had decided that Chicago was technically not part of Illinois, and that the rest of the state was actually part of Kentucky.

If you don’t mind, I’ve taken the liberty of redrawing the map in accordance with my theory. So, you’ll see that the large tangerine-colored state is the territory now known as Kentuckinois. The salmon-colored state near the top remains as a tiny remnant of the original Illinois, and contains mostly Rockford and various tollbooths along the interstate. The lime-colored state along Lake Michigan encompasses what is now officially named Chicagoland. All other midwestern states remain as is (for now). I think you will all agree that this is a great improvement on United States cartography.

Somewhere further south in Kentuckinois, I decided to write a new website. I have ‘humpregistry.com’ written in my notebook, but on second thought, it’s not such a great idea. After that, I decided to write a book. Then I wrote down two other undoubtedly excellent ideas, but I managed to write one on top of the other (it was dark!), so they are unfortunately lost forever. Around 1am, I told Heather, “Father Hennepin gets me hot.” She replied, “Yeah. I know.” We decided maybe it was time to stop and take a break.

We pulled off the freeway at (Champaign-)Urbana, and found a 24-hour grocery store called Schnucks. As we were crossing the front of the store with that funny quick!-where-are-the-bathrooms? walk, this guy stopped us:

UrbanaBoy: Hey, did you girls just get back from that show?
Me: What show? (Taking a full 10 minutes to realize he’s referring to my Realistics tshirt) Oh, no. We’re just driving through.
UrbanaBoy: Where are you from?
Me: Minneapolis. We’re headed to Nashville. And Savannah.
UrbanaBoy: What do you think of Illinois?
Me: Um. Are you from here?
Heather: It sucks!

We peed, then went in search of snacks. We were not disappointed, as Schnucks is apparently the store for stoners. There were six or seven aisles of snack food. I didn’t get a store map, but if I remember it correctly, it went:

Aisle 1: Produce.
Aisle 2: Chips. Nuts.
Aisle 3: Candy. Cookies.
Aisle 4: Canned Goods.
Aisle 5: More Chips! Pretzels!
Aisle 6: Pop (they call it ‘Soda’. Ha.)
Aisle 7: Munchies! Even More Cookies! Want Some Peanuts?
Aisle 8: Toilet Paper.
Aisle 9: Holy Crap, DORITOS!

And so on. By the time we got to the register, we were in barely-restrained hysterics. Then, standing in line, surrounded by a bunch of just-a-little-off people, we both had that moment where you think, ‘there is something very very wrong here, and I need to escape.’ So we did. With our snacks, of course.

Back on the road, it was my shift. I’m really terrible driving at night, something about being sleepy and not seeing very well that makes for a surreal, video-gamelike experience rather than safe, defensive driving. But I was doing fine, and Heather dozed off for a couple hours. I woke her up to see the giant roadside cross in Effingham, which is lit well enough to be seen from outer space, so that even alien life can come to find the one true path. I listened to Amnesiac twice, because I felt bad waking her up again to switch CDs. Finally, round about 4:15am, we crossed into Kentucky, and decided it was time to stop for a meal, and what better place to do it than Paducah?

We pulled off at the first exit, figuring there’d be about a million roadside diners open in the middle of the night. We were wrong. Heather experienced the thrill of victory when she sighted a Bob Evans, then felt the bitter agony of defeat when she realized it was closed. Still hopeful, we got back on the highway and headed to the next exit (because, yes, Paducah is so large a metropolis, it has itself three whole exits on the interstate). This exit had a couple truck stops, a closed McDonald’s, and a Waffle House. There was no question about it: Waffle House.

Now, I have to admit, I have a thing for Waffle House. No, I had never been there in my entire life. They don’t even have Waffle House in Minnesota (this is pancake country). But every time I see a Waffle House, I have to point it out. And in the south, that’s at almost every exit. See, the thing about Waffle House is the logo. Tell me it’s not great. It’s like the ugliest logo ever designed, and it would make for the best tshirt ever.

Also, their restaurants look like see-through trailers. What’s not to love?

So, we went inside. We got some funny looks, but I’d have been mad if we hadn’t. The cook and the waitress were standing behind the counter, just waiting for new victims customers, because it was 4:30am and they were chatty and sick to death of each other. There were a couple other trucker-types sitting at the counter, shoveling eggs and toast into their mouths silently. I picked a booth right in the middle of all the action, so we could get the full experience. We giggled at the placemat menus. We thanked the waitress, who gushed about our hairstyles for far too long. Heather showed me the bottle of salsa, labeled ‘Casa De Waffle.’ I told her to steal it, but she wouldn’t. That girl has scruples, or something. I ordered the only thing on the menu I could eat, and even that was a stretch: grilled cheese. Then I saw that they had cheese grits, and how could I resist? Cheese grits + Waffle House + Paducah + 4:30am. You understand. Heather got the All-Star Special ($4.99): 2 eggs, grits, toast, jelly, waffle, and bacon.

As he finished each item, the cook guy would yell, “Eggs over easy! Order up! Take me out back and shoot me!” or “Grilled cheese! Order up! Take me out back and shoot me!” I dumped the quarters from my wallet onto the table and headed to the jukebox. What I found there was almost too wonderful to relate, but I’ll try: the first twenty or so selections were all songs

about the Waffle House.

I am not joking, even though you suspect it is too good to be true. Since you obviously require proof, I have done some investigation, and am beyond ecstatic to be able to offer you the following: Jukebox Favorites and It’s a Waffle House Christmas. And now you know what you’re getting for the holidays.

I treated the lucky customers of the Waffle House to ‘844,739 Ways to Eat a Hamburger (At the Waffle House)’ by Billy Dee Cox, because I had been staring at the sign on the wall with the same message on it, trying to figure out if there was real math involved, or if they had just made that shit up. My food arrived while I was typing in my next selections, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, followed by ‘Stand By Your Man’, and then ‘My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys.’ It was a southern triple-play par excellence. I returned to the booth to find Heather rolling her eyes, and a bowl of grits with an unmeltable slice of american cheese on top. I ate it anyway.

I never wanted to leave the Waffle House, because it was the most perfect place on earth, at least for that moment. But we had places to go, and a state line or two to cross before we reached our destination.

We woke up at 7am to some horrifying talk radio station. We got up and fed the seagulls our remaining pretzels from the hotel balcony, then checked out. We were on our way to Charleston, via Starbucks.

I was cranky as hell, as I usually am in the morning. It seemed to take an extra long time to get there, which we finally did around 11:30. Heather wanted to do some present shopping at the Old City Market (on eBay Street!), I wanted to pee. We drove around and around looking for parking, but the place was mobbed. Finally, I told her to go shop and I’d keep looking for parking, and call her when I found it. I never did. Around 12:30, about to pee my pants, I called her and told her we had to switch so I could go to the bathroom, so we did that. Then she went back in for more, and I circled until she was ready to go. Charleston is an incredibly beautiful city, but when you don’t have time to enjoy it, what’s the point?

We got back on the road. I was still crabby, since we had over 1300 miles to drive and were making hardly any progress. We stopped in Columbia, South Carolina for gas and food. We wanted to eat in the car, and since fast food is almost never an option for me, we picked a grocery store, Bi-Lo, instead. I emerged with a protein bar, 2 bananas, and grapes. Heather got a sub sandwich she told me she had ordered because it had “salami and salami and salami and salami and cheese”

We drove and drove and had nonsensical conversations about pretzel dessicants and giant cicadas taking the place of the headrest in your car. Sample conversation*:

Me: PARDON ME, THERE’S A CICADA BEHIND YOU!
H: WHAT? I CAN’T HEAR YOU! I HAVE A CICADA FOR A HEADREST!

*This conversation is best when screamed at the top of your lungs.

It kept us awake, even if we barely managed to stay on the road because we were laughing so hard. We drove through the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina, then the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee. By 6:30pm, we were in Knoxville. I had decided that I really, really wanted to write a book, and had the outline written in my head. Heather was loudly voicing her opinion of each and every other driver on the road. We stopped at a gas station to pee, and Heather had a fight with the slush puppy machine. I decided that ‘Easy On, Easy Off’ was the new title of my autobiography (which gets a new title almost every single day).

At 7:30pm, we were passing the town of Corbin at an alarming speed, and both saw a sign that could possibly change our lives, so we exited. Because, my friends, Corbin, Kentucky is the birthplace of KFC, and the home to the Colonel Sanders museum.

We went into the Sanders Cafe, which is a functioning KFC attached to the original restaurant. There are some statues and displays honoring the (fake) colonel, which were reminiscent of the Sam Walton shrine in Arkansas. They had original menus and photos and even a Colonel Sanders halloween mask, which was both unsettling and erotic. They have the original kitchen and dining room, the (fake) colonel’s office, and a motel room. That’s because the (fake) colonel also ran a chain of motels in the area, and in order to advertise their swankiness, he built a replica in his restaurant. Weird.

Speaking of Sam Walton, on the way back to the interstate, we encountered this:

How often do you see an abandoned Wal-Mart?? It was a good feeling, until I realized that it was because they had just built a brand new Wal-Mart Supercenter down the road. Fuckers.

At 8:15pm, we decided to stop for dinner. That was because Heather’s dream had finally been realized: we found a Bob Evans in Richmond, Kentucky. I don’t know why she likes that place so much; we had stopped at one once because it was the only thing in the entire state of Missouri that was open on New Year’s. Something about biscuits. Anyway, we stopped. In the lobby, they had an American flag hanging on the wall, with a marker for pledging your allegiance, or something. So I did, because there never was a truer patriot than me. We got seated, and I went to use the restroom. On the way back, I passed three waitresses (I know, I usually refer to them as ‘servers’, but this was the kind of place where the girls all worked out front, and the boys all worked in the kitchen), and none of them would make eye contact. Maybe it was my ‘THUG’ tshirt? They all had poorly-conceived face paintings on their cheeks. In an orgasmic frenzy, Heather ordered the Homestead Breakfast with sixteen types of meat, and three pounds of starch. (She wishes for me to mention that she did not, in fact, eat it all. Not even close.)

I ordered a salad and a grilled cheese, which at least was digestable this time around. From our booth, I could see all the behind-the-counter antics, and watched with fascination. The waitresses compared tips; ours counted her cash and had a total of $35. Now, I’m just making assumptions, but I’m pretty sure she must have worked the dinner rush, since they were only open til 10. Sunday dinner, and only $35 in tips? Kentucky sucks.

Carl, the manager, was one of those guys who’s married, in his mid-30s, and likes to refer to the staff as his ‘girls’. He was flirty and condescending. He liked to throw his substantial weight around. He was sure that he was well-liked by all, and he was seriously mistaken. He probably touched a little too often, too. At one point, our server called him over to see if she was making a side salad correctly. He counted the croutons, then removed some. I wanted to cry, because somewhere, a really bad country-western song had been written about this man.

Our bill was $15, and it was disturbing to realize that my $4 tip would make up a full 10% of her take for the night. We got back on the road to get in a few more hours of driving that night. I didn’t see much of Kentucky, but Louisville struck me as kind of cool. From there, we crossed into Indiana, and were safely ensconced once again in NASCAR country. It was raining and we were tired, so we finally pulled off at the Mariann Motel in Scottsburg, one of the three listed in the hotel guide we picked up at a rest area. We each took a bed and collapsed for the night.

We were on the road at 7:30, ready to conquer the 900-mile drive to Nashville. If the scenery in Wisconsin is less than inspiring, Illinois is ten times worse, alternating regularly between vast expanses of nothing and vast expanses of nothing with snow.

Things were looking bleak until we stopped in Metropolis. We paid homage to Superman, had dinner, and stopped at BP just long enough to get gas, determine that southern Illinois is in actuality part of Kentucky, and play ‘take-a-tract, leave-a-tract‘ in the religious flyer box at the front.

Revived and back on the road, we officially arrived in the (New) South. Heather celebrated by taking a nap in the back seat, while Jay and I convinced ourselves that, hell yes, we can make that 1300-mile drive back home from New Orleans all in one day. We’re idiots.

We dropped Jay off at his friend’s house, and headed to our hotel, which was within sight of both a Waffle House and a Cracker Barrel. Surrounded by down-home cookin’ in the country music capitol of the universe, Nashville, Tennessee. Perfect.